American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era: A Study of Social Commentary in Films and Television Programs, 1961-1973 Book

Barrier's history of animation is detailed and revealing, even for those who already know a good deal of what he's talking about. As another reviewer pointed out, this book is best read in conjunction with Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons; Revised and Updated (which you should read first), since Maltin's approach and style is extremely different from Barrier's. While Maltin focuses more on the history of different studio's overall changes, Barrier is more focused on the evolution of character. He spends much of his time discussing animator's struggles with trying to get their characters just right, trying to evolve them, getting them to have good chemistry with the other characters, choosing to have a realistic style or nonrealistic, etc.

My main complaint with Barrier is actually one of the strengths of the book as well, which is his hyper criticism. Leonard Maltin begins his book with the sentence "I love cartoons," and you can feel that enthusiasm run throughout his work. Barrier on the other hand, is clearly just as passionate, but not quite as adoring of all things animated. There are times in the book where you wonder what the guy does like, since he seems to find major fault with even all the cartoons or animated features that are typically considered masterpieces. Without a careful reading, you might walk away thinking that all that Barrier likes is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, anything by Bob Clampett, and select masterpieces by Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. While it's true that he has a somewhat overly sharp critical eye for works that achieve greatness just fine, his criticisms are generally insightful and deeply technical from a storytelling and animated point of view which would be hard to notice for most people.

While you may not always agree with him, there will surely be thoughts he has on some of your favorite works that you never thought about. One of my favorite Tom and Jerry cartoons is Mouse in Manhattan, and while Barrier has nothing nice to say about it, he points out that the animators failed to animate any people populating the city! I always wondered why that version of Manhattan always felt sort of empty. So this is an example of how you can learn from Barrier's thoughts and become a more nuanced thinker on animation. I noticed many things watching Chuck Jones' The Dover Boys of Pimento University before I read anything from Barrier about it that I had learned from reading his book, and once I did get to his analysis he pointed out the very things I noticed! So the book does train your eye!

I would highly recommend reading this book along with Maltin's if you're an animation obsessive like me, since you'll never think of characterization, style, detail, and storytelling in animation quite the same again.